This article is about the educational work of governesses on Australia's remote cattle and sheep stations. These stations occupy vast tracts of land in the outback, and form part of global food supply chains exporting meat to countries around the world. The article explores the nature of governesses' work, the boundaries they negotiate to perform…

A study examined how the occupational structure of the Australian labor market evolved and how individuals fared in the process. It identified issues in defining skill and knowledge and followed Elias and McKnight (2001) in stating that sufficient evidence showed a very high correlation between job-required cognitive ability and ordinal skill…

The author describes the operations of her snail farming venture in rural Australia. She discusses such topics as feeding, allowing visitors, and arranging for snailsitters. Marketing successes are highlighted. (CH)

A survey was designed to assist in constructing a picture of new vocational education and training professionals working in organizational settings in Australia. They were practitioners whose positional titles included training and development (T&D), human resource development, or human resource practitioners who work within organizational…

The vocational education and training (VET) profession in Australia is confronted with a radical reconstruction, not only in terms of the new work VET professionals are expected to perform but also in terms of the new culture and professional roles that have emerged out of the diversifying sites of professional practice. Reasons for the shift in…

This paper provides an Australian perspective on the question of the name that should be given to people who work as information specialists in schools. The paper reviews metaphorical analysis as a research tool and outlines a qualitative research project employing the metaphor technique in an attempt to discover the conceptions that stakeholders…

These 12 papers are part of the study materials for the one-semester distance education unit, Project Development Plan 2, in the Open Campus Program at Deakin University (Australia). They examine the breadth and depth of the actions and debates around the social construction of skill and the critical role played by the concept of skill in the…

One of a series of work-based interviews about occupations in Australia, this booklet presents a personal interview with a computer salesman about his job. The following questions are answered: what a computer salesman does, why the person chose the field of employment, how the person found out about the job, what he does and doesn't like about…

This document contains 18 papers from the human resource development and manpower training section of an international conference on vocational education and training (VET) for lifelong learning in the information era. The following papers are included: "Use of Social and Economic Modeling to Plan Vocational Education and Training"…